ICYMI: ‘NYN’ talks TR and Taft with Doris Kearns Goodwin

In a suitable kickoff to a long and rewarding winter of reading, WMHT’s “New York Now” features Matt Ryan’s interview with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who recently added the braided history of Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and a pack of pioneering journalists to her list of acclaimed and best-selling nonfiction titles. Goodwin spoke about “The Bully Pulpit” before addressing a sold-out crowd in Saratoga Springs earlier this month.

The episode also features an excerpt from my December 2011 interview with another master biographer, Robert Caro, who talks about his strategy for telling the story of JFK’s assassination from Lyndon Johnson’s perspective. That section of “The Passage of Power,” the fourth volume of Caro’s “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” is now available as an e-book.